funny house offer and kind of a vent UPDATE PG 4, 8, 9 & 10

okay so my home is listed for $139,900. it's listed below the sold comps in my neighborhood. all the homes are listed right around the same price, a few the exact 139,900 though they are much smaller than mine. i am the best deal per sqft (more house for your money). i've been having showings every week even in our slow market.

anyways we get an offer thursday for 130,000 and they want us to pay 2,700 toward their closing cost as well. our realtor says they are just seeing what they can get basically. okay fine, i understand the try to see what kind of deal they can get. that same day, we send them back 137,500 and that we'll agree to give them 2,700. at this point it's it's about 1k less than what we needed bc the way the taxes works i'd have to pay my taxes in full. my realtor said i'd get most of it back later that year, but i wouldn't get it back when i need it for my new home. so to me i'm in a spot not having that money for my closing. so the money would have to come out of my savings which i can't really afford atm. it was late thursday night when we countered and they have still have til monday 5pm to respond.

i get a call the next morning, friday, and they counter 132k and still want the 2,700 as well. i wait for dh to get home and when he does we go over it. stunned and unhappy we agree to meet and see if there is anything we can do at this point. my realtor, i'll call her ann, says that we are just going back and forth verbally at this point. she did say that he said he's only going to 132k and then he's going to bid on 3 more houses. we say well we can't do that. she asks what we can do. dd makes a loud noise, screams, and we all panic and run to see what happened. we let ann go atm.

dd is okay. she broke into dh's office and shoved the printer off the table, and it scared everyone. gotta love 2yr olds! we talk some more about it and decide to lower another 500 and throw in the fridge and all the window treatments (including the rods and curtains) to make moving in a little bit more convenient till they if they wanted to change them out, even though the are neutral colors and almost brand new. i could def use or sell that stuff at my new place, but i wanted to sweeten the deal for them the best way i could without taking another hit to my savings. we also at this point would just feel like "eh" about the deal at this point. happy to be leaving, but not too happy about the money. we were willing to do it though if it meant moving on with our lives. we did tell ann though that this is it. we can not do any better, so to tell them it's our final offer, it's firm, and to not call back unless they go for it. we meant that 100%.

tonight, saturday, i get another call. ann says, "you will not believe this!" since she showed our house today, i thought this new couple was putting in an offer. nope! it was the same people! he offered 134k this time and still wanted the 2,700! wow the nerve of this guy! we tell ann no and that we meant what we said before. 10 minutes later what do you think happened??? another call from ann lol! he's offering 135k now and still wants 2,700. saying this is his top offer. lol it's just funny at this point. i feel like it's a game to him. we say no and hold firm. ann goes ahead and asks about the 136k bc she says she knows it's next lol. i believe she knows he's playing games as well. we say no bc we just don't have the money to do it. no more calls tonight!

since he said he was going to bid on some other houses i'm wondering if he didn't do that and get shot down. the only other thing he can get is an older home, much older or a smaller home for this price. he may have figured that out the hard way over friday and saturday thus the calls to me within minutes of each other at 8:30 at night. he still has til monday at 5pm to responded to my original counter offer. i'm wondering if he is just planning on accepting it, but just seeing if he can do better with me or the other houses (if there any) in the mean time. all i know is i'm getting tired of the guy. i don't think i'm answering phone all day sunday though.

i hope this made someone laugh. it was fun for me to write anyways. anyone else have anything like this happen before? any advise for me, besides take the offer? i've already gotten that one from one friend, but it's easy to spend money that's not yours, you know. def wasn't easy for me to give up a couple thousand that i don't have to spend already. there's lots of buyers looking right now. just have to wait for the right one i guess. oh i'll post a couple pics of my house later just in case you're curious.

If I'm understanding correctly, your house has been on the market for a year and you are within $1000 of an agreement. All emotions aside, the math seems to say you should take the deal. How much are you losing in interest every month that you make a payment? It seems like if you sell now you'll come out ahead vs sell in 4-5 months (summer) after paying interest on your loan all that time.

If you aren't desperate, 2000$ is worth holding out for in that price range. We have a house priced close to yours and our craziest offer was $123,000 with 2500 in closing costs.
Eta: and they wanted our fridge, blinds/drapes, and . Bar stools

Yeah, if he doesn't accept it Monday I'd just wait. That house is gorgeous!! I'd buy it if I lived there! The yard is lovely too. In our neighborhood houses are like 600k +. They are huge (4,000-5,000 sq ft) but the houses are about 3 ft from each other and NO yard or privacy.

I will also agree many dont have imaginations. Sometimes I would walk around with people thinking if you weren't scared of paint this would be an amazing house. SIGH!

I would suggest taking a hard look at the ones that sold in 3 months about who was the realtor. Are they with Realtors with alot of connections? For example I know not everywhere but the Keller Williams office is big here so I get to personally announce a listing to over 200 agents before it even hits the MLS. That is a huge plus for my sellers. I also can allow my other agents to do open houses in my listings so I have alot of agents to choose from should my clients be interested in open house.

Spring is coming!

I will caution you though we are gearing up for expecting a ton of listings this year. I know I have some already in the pipe line. Remember when the first time buyer home credit was offered - well everyone had to live in their home for 3 yrs and that expired this year. I have one couple I am going to see this week to get them listed in March b/c they can close until after mid March so they fulfill their 3 yr timeframe. This is just an FYI if it seemed like alot bought back then you could see alot of listings.

When we sold our house 2 years ago (we live in an area that did not see a decline in housing prices or a ton of foreclosures) it seemed like with a few of the offeres we got, the buyer acted like he was doing us a favor by bidding on our house.

Our first week on the market (asking $103K) we go an offer for $90K cash. My realtor was excited. (that probably shoudl have been my first clue that the realtor wasn't all that.) Then I calmly pointed out that I really didn't care WHERE the money came from. For me, cash wasn't any better than a check from their bank. Yeah, might have fewer issues going to closing but I wasn't in such a rush to sell that I would take that much less. From what I heard the buyers were really pissed off that I wasn't excite that they were a "cash buyer." Big whoop.

hahaha okay so i get another call just now! he went up 500, so offer is 135,500 + give him 2,700. that's not enough, soooo i tell ann to say sure, we can do $135,500 but he's going to get 1,200 toward his closing instead of 2,700. we are only 1,500 dollar difference now. getting close, so we'll see what he decides to do.

"If I'm understanding correctly, your house has been on the market for a year and you are within $1000 of an agreement. All emotions aside, the math seems to say you should take the deal. How much are you losing in interest every month that you make a payment? It seems like if you sell now you'll come out ahead vs sell in 4-5 months (summer) after paying interest on your loan all that time."

yeah here almost a year. at the time we were still going to lose about 3,500 to our savings on his offer last night. we are willing to eat 1,500 at the offer we made to him. i'm not willing to eat 3,500 nor can i. my payments are very low here, below 800 with taxes and insurance combined into that #. rent alone for a pos apartment is going to be that if not close. i'm in no hurry. dh will be teaching again next semester (he took off for our baby's to come) so we'll have more income again. also i should have some more paid down by then, so i could have more money to work with. trust me i've thought about all this, but thanks for the help! :)

I totally get where you're coming from, OP. when the seller has to bring money to the table, 2k is a lot of money. When you're talking 2k more on the life of a 30 yr mortgage, it's a few dollars.

We sold our house 3 yrs ago for 80 some thousand and had to bring 13k to closing. It wasn't the buyer's problem but it sucked balls. If we could have gotten her to go up 2k more, I'd have been stoked. Ours was on the market 2 yrs at the worst possible point in the market. It was in mid-Missouri.